Thursday, March 28:
In the morning R. said to me: “In my bath I thought of the Japanese ministers, who have to slit open their own bellies. That can’t be easy; it would be better to let someone else do it.” Then he sang me a theme: “The Andante of your symphony,” I said, and then he suddenly asked me about Pusinelli; as so often before, he puts my thoughts into words; I have to tell him the truth. Silence.
He goes to his work; my telling him to write down the theme distracted him, he says, and now he also has the finale. He plays it. “What key shall I write my symphony in?” he asks me. “When Parsifal has been composed, I shall write nine symphonies, the ninth with choruses: ‘O Pain, thou spark of hellish darkness, knocks and blows are all thou gav’st us, and a foe besmeared with mud.’”
Yesterday, when R. asked me for the letter and I had to search for the folder in the darkness, I decided to consider it a good omen if I found it at once among all the other things; I was successful, and R. was delighted with my methodicalness. “You are splendid,” he says. I confess my foolishness to him. “No faith without superstition,” and in his kindness he indulges my superstitious nonsense about the light! Oh, how kind he is!
After his siesta he comes to me and sings “Bravo bravissimo, bravo bravissimo, Figaro” and says he is always singing this to himself nowadays. He leaves me, singing it anew. I call after him, “Your love is necessary to me.” “No, it is I who need you!”
In the evening he writes to his friend Sulzer, sending him Parsifal; he ends his letter, “There is such a thing as happiness, and we know how to appreciate it!” He says to me, “I enjoy telling Sulzer things like that.” In the Schopenhauer biography, R. tells of the Hungarian refugee Bizonfy, who confided his situation to Sch., whereupon the latter advised him to beg the Emperor for an amnesty, “which he was reluctant to do.” Our discussion of Sch.’s way of expressing himself reminds me of R., and how I share Sch.’s feeling that every conversation with another person leaves a disturbing echo! My only wish is to be left unmolested with R., living by and for ourselves.
He tells me that during his walk he was searching around for a theme for a scherzo, until he began to feel how absurd it all was, for the symphonic form was obsolete, done with. Marke made him laugh during his walk. R. had shut him up, but he escaped through the fences of three other gardens, and finally through the fence of the palace gardens, and hopped madly around R. R. took great delight in his unspoiled animal nature. Late in the evening he goes walking in the garden, and I immerse myself in my thoughts, wandering through our dear rooms, in my happiness and unworthiness! Friend Wol. tells us that the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg has sent 900 marks for the Society. Regarding the “Bravo bravissimo, Figaro” theme he says, “What could taste right after the drastic dynamic effect of that? With Mozart’s Figaro that didn’t matter.”